Yesterday driving home on the bus from the university, the bus stopped for gas at a service station. The name of the station was “Easy Joy”.
I thought, how apt for our sojourn here! I think it was George Bernard Shaw who said “I dislike feeling at home when I am abroad”.
Well I certainly don’t feel at home, but there is this wonderful feeling of joyful abandonment harkening back to student days in a foreign country many
decades ago. Sometimes at my age,  I feel more like there are some things I would rather  have done already than to have to do now!
Every day brings new experiences, new joys. The sun has been shining (I’m a sucker for sunshine”), and we’ve been able to explore  a little more of the area. 
Just a few minutes away is a lovely park (Green Lake) where we spent a good deal of the afternoon on Monday.
Yesterday morning we were awakened by children at the school across the street singing “Old MacDonald”, and “Battle Hymn of the Republic” – in English!
Talk about a collision of worlds, Chinese pupils paying no attention to political polarities, and singing these songs with joyful abandonment.

Yesterday was our first day at the University! That too, was a joy! I should mention that it’s about an hours drive to the university in a brand new city called Cheng Gong.
With Kunming ever expanding and space being at a premium,  at least 3 of the universities in Kunming are building new, vast campuses in Cheng Gong. It’s very strange to see a new city being built so quickly. There are hundreds of high rise apartments, most of them still empty. The drive to the campus is on new highways, most of them 6 lane with wide boulevards, and thousands of young saplings and shrubs planted on them. The light standards too, are each equipped with solar panels and small wind turbines. Kunming prides itself on being a “clean city”, free of  much of the pollution that other Chinese cities are plagued with. From what we’ve seen, I would credit them with only partial success.

I think Howard has probably told you about the choir rehearsal in his blog, so I won’t repeat.  It was fun to see how much the students enjoyed their first rehearsal, and there was a genuine groan when it was over – they wanted to go on! Their  English skills are not as good as  we anticipated, but it’s amazing how universal a language music is, and the communication worked very well.
Until the choir  knows the notes better, I won’t have too much language coaching to do, maybe they’ll be ready for me in a few weeks.
After we got back to Kunming, our lovely Olivia took us out for dinner, another winner food wise! I should say that Olivia is a charming young woman who works at the university, and has been assigned to be Howard’s translator, and just generally look after us.  She is one of the few who speak English. Very helpful for us!
Later this morning we will wander over to an outdoor market about 10 minutes away, and see what kind of fresh produce we can find. At this point, Howard is at the university 2 days a week, so we have lots of time to explore!
As someone once said, “too often travel, instead of broadening the mind, merely lengthens the conversation”.
I don’t want to be accused of too lengthy conversations, and it’s time to go out and broaden my mind!
So have a good night everyone, and Howard and I will have another day of “Easy Joy”!

We love to hear from you!

Maggie